Lee has been reasonably well-known in the conspiracy
community for a while, but made a bit of a splash in 2011 when the conspiracy website SANE Vax claimed to find “Recombinant HPV DNA”
in “multiple samples of Gardasil”.
Lee, of course, was the guy (“well-known
for using cutting-edge DNA sequencing for molecular diagnoses”) contacted
to perform the analyses. Of course, we are not informed about how he got the results – there is no
scientific article or report attached to the findings, and neither he nor SANE
Vax would tell us because they need to “protect
the proprietary processes and information utilized by our laboratory to test
the samples.” That is one pretty enormous red flag, insofar as testing for
DNA contamination is otherwise a pretty straightforward affair, at least if the
amount of contamition is sufficient to be anything to conceivably worry about.
Nor do SANE Vax tell us how much was
detected, which is rather telling; it turns out that the quantities were so
small that Lee had to use nested PCR to detect it, which means that they are close to homeopathic (if Lee really found anything at all). Moreover, one would need some serious pseudoscience to dream up a possible mechanism by which such DNA would be harmful, but at
least Lee is perfectly willing to provide that:
“the
HPV DNA in Gardasil™ is not ‘natural’ DNA. It is a recombinant HPV DNA (rDNA) –
genetically engineered – to be inserted into yeast cells for VLP
(virus-like-particle) protein production. rDNA is known to behave differently
from natural DNA. It may enter a human cell, especially in an inflammatory
lesion caused by the effects of the aluminum adjuvant, via poorly understood
mechanisms.” That is utter nonsense (but common nonsense in anti-vaxx groups), but we suspect that most of SANE Vax’s regular audience
wouldn’t know, so claims like this probably do their tricks among the target
audience. More details here.

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientist and crackpot, who seems to have a
penchant for choosing the methodology for investigation based on what is most
likely to create fear and sensation rather than accuracy. Dangerous.